Several months ago, Oreste Maria Petrillo contacted me about doing an interview for his Old School Training site at www.oldschooltraining.net. Here is the interview. The questions are from Oreste, and the answers are from me.

We have lots to cover, so we’ll make it a three part interview. Let’s get started!

Hi Brooks, I’m glad to have you on the blog of the Italian community of Old School Training. In your opinion, why is Old School Training better than modern bodybuilding methods?

Let’s begin by defining old school training. Many people define old school training as the way professional bodybuilders trained in the 1970’s or 1980’s. To me, that’s modern bodybuilding.

My definition of old-school training is anything from the 1890’s through the 1950’s. I use 1960 as a cut-off point because drug use in sport – including weightlifting, powerlifting and bodybuilding – began to take off in the 1960’s. My vision of old school training is drug-free training, so I focus on the era before drugs became so prevalent. Of course, some degree of drug use may have occurred in the 1950’s – the Russians are reported to have used testosterone or crude forms of anabolic steroids back then – but drug use increased enormously after 1960.

I consider the most productive training methods to be those used by drug-free trainees in the 1930’s, 1940’s and 1950’s. These methods built a perfect balance of strength, muscle and lifelong good health. They were methods that could be used by real people, living in the real world – not by professional bodybuilders who do nothing but train all day.

And because the old school methods from the 1930’s, 1940’s and 1950’s did not lead to overtraining, those who follow them do not need to use anabolic steroids or other dangerous drugs to recover from their workouts. They can follow natural training methods and do very well, both in terms of strength and power and in terms of muscular development.

In contrast, modern bodybuilding programs are drug-based program. They work if you use drugs. If not, they almost always lead to overtraining. That makes them unsustainable for drug-free trainees.

Who is the most representative athlete of the old school era and why?

Without a doubt, it was John Grimek. Modern trainees have no idea of the world-wide acclaim that Grimek enjoyed. He was the top man in the world for a quarter of a century, and his impact on the Iron Game was enormous. He probably did more to popularize weight training than any man who ever lived.

John Grimek was “the total package.” That’s a cliché phrase now, but in his case, it applies. Many people don’t know this, but Grimek was the United States Weightlifting champion in the Heavyweight class in 1936. He set several United States records in the military press. He twice won the North American Weightlifting Championship. On two or three occasions he set a World record in the military press, but because of technicalities, he never received official credit for the lift. He represented the United States at the Olympic Games in 1936, and again at the World Championships in 1938.

When they started to hold bodybuilding contests, Grimek entered and won the Mr. America contest two years in a row. He was so far ahead of the other bodybuilders of the era that the officials passed a rule (the so-called “Grimek Rule”) banning winners of the contest from re-entering it.

In 1948, at close to 40 years of age, Grimek won the Mr. Universe contest in London, beating the great Steve Reeves in an epic showdown.

The following year, he won the Mr. USA contest, defeating a field of former Mr. America winners and other top bodybuilders, including Steve Reeves and Clarence “Clancy” Ross.

He retired from bodybuilding competition with an undefeated record. No one else has won all the major contests of his era and remained undefeated against all comers.

Grimek wrote for Bob Hoffman’s Strength and Health magazine for something like 40 years, and wrote for and edited the magazine’s sister publication, Muscular Development, for around 20 years. Through his articles and his question and answer columns, he taught old school training methods – the methods that he himself used with such great success – to hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of trainees the world over.

As you can tell, I’m a huge Grimek fan. I wrote a course about him. You can find it in hard copy at my website or in e-book format in the Amazon Kindle bookstore, where it became a best-seller in its category after just 24 hours (which tells you something about John Grimek’s enduring legend):

The first is Tony Terlazzo, who was born in Italy and moved to the United States when he was a small boy – at age 5, I believe. He became the first Olympic gold medal winner from the United States in modern weightlifting. Tony went on to become a multi-time World champion. From 1936 through the mid-1940s, he may have been the very best weightlifter in the world on a pound for pound basis. He also was very well-developed, and placed high in a number of bodybuilding contests.

Tony was super strong, and could military press more than 160% of his own bodyweight. And remember, this was a strict military press with no knee kick, no leg drive and no back-bend – and he did it without anabolic steroids or drugs of any sort.

And please note – he was NOT a natural strongman. He could only press 80 pounds when he began weightlifting. Later, he pressed 260 or 265 pounds. That shows what old school training will do for you.

One of the remarkable things about Tony Terlazzo was how he used the power of his mind to win weightlifting championships. He had no mental boundaries, and never viewed any weight as unliftable. Iron Game author Harry Paschall told a story about sitting on a park bench with Tony before a National championship. Tony talked for hours about the weights he was going to lift in the contest, and about his goals for future contests. He spoke with passion and conviction, and was fully convinced of his ability to lift the heaviest weights. Paschall viewed it as a form of self-hypnosis.

The second is Bruno Sammartino, who was born in the Abbruzo region of Italy.

His family had to hide in the mountains during World War Two, and poor Bruno almost starved to death. After the War, the family moved to the United States. Poor Bruno was a classic 97-pound weakling, and the other kids were always picking on him. He started lifting weights, and made incredible gains. He went up to 265 pounds of very solid muscle, and set a world record in the bench press by lifting 565 pounds. Later, he got into professional wrestling, and became the heavyweight champion of the world. He held the title for many years, and was one of the most popular wrestlers of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Bruno wrote a short bodybuilding course that was aimed at teenage boys who were just getting started in their training. I saw an ad for it in the back of a wrestling magazine and sent away for it when I was 11 or 12 years old. It was my first bodybuilding course!

The third – and this will surprise many readers – was the famous tenor, Mario Lanza.

Mario was a first-generation Italian-American. His mother was from Tocco da Canauria in the Abbruzzo region, and his father was from Filignanc in the Molise region. Mario was born in Philadelphia.

Back in the day, Philadelphia was a hotbed of weightlifting and bodybuilding. There was a wonderful little gym called The South Phillie Weightlifting Club. It was on the second floor above a machine shop. It was very primitive – no running water, and no air conditioning or heat. The equipment was very basic – barbells, dumbbells, and homemade wooden squat stands and benches. Nothing else other than wooden lifting platforms.

They had an old wood-burning stove by the door, and in the wintertime they put one barbell close to the stove to keep it from getting too cold. When you came to the gym, you got to use that bar for your warm-ups. After your warm-ups, you had to leave it by the stove for the next guy and use one of the colder bars further away from the stove.

That may sound like an impossible place to get a good workout. But listen to this – in 1948, they had seven weight classes for weightlifting in the Olympic Games. Two of the seven gold medal winners – John Davis and Frank Spellman – trained at that little gym. It goes to show what you can do if you don’t let things stand in your way and you don’t feel sorry for yourself.

Anyhow, Mario Lanza was a great bodybuilding and lifting fan when he was a young man. After he became a famous single and movie star, he was featured in Strength and Health magazine. He had a personal trainer (which was very rare back then) named Terry Robinson. They built a gym at Mario’s house in Hollywood.

Let’s move on to another topic. I know you wrote for Stuart McRobert’s Hardgainer magazine for several years. But are you sure you’re a hardgainer? You’re bigger and stronger than other hardgainers!

First of all, when it comes to training advice and knowing how to train, it doesn’t matter if someone is a hard gainer or an easy gainer. What matters is where they stand on drug use – and whether they use drugs in their own training.

If you’re looking for good training advice, listen to people who support, promote and follow drug-free training. Forget about the hardgainer label and focus on the drug issue. Look for someone who knows how to build serious strength and muscle without drugs.

The problem with the hardgainer label is that you can only judge it in retrospect. Too many trainees argue about whether they or others are hardgainers. The important thing is to train – and to train the right way. If you train the right way, good things will happen.

John Grimek started training at age 18. He weighed 120 pounds. Nothing whatsoever suggested that he would one day be hailed as the best developed man in the world. But he believed in himself, and he trained very intelligently and very hard – and the rest, as they say, is history.

I already mentioned Tony Terlazzo. He wasn’t strong at all when he began training. No one would have dreamed that he was going to build world-class strength and lifting ability. But he went on to become an Olympic and World champion and record holder.

Or look at Bruno Sammartino. He started training as a 97-pound weakling. He built himself into a 265 pound strongman and wrestling champion.

Do you know Bruno’s secret of success?

He talks about it in that old course I mentioned.

He says that other, much bigger and much stronger kids started training with him when he first got started. But they all quit. One by one they gave up, lost interest or decided that working out was too hard. But Bruno kept at it. He never missed a workout for several years – and he always kept trying to add more and more weight to the bar. And look what happened.

In my own case, I trained for many years before I learned the secret of truly effective strength training. After almost 20 years of training, I weighed 180 pounds, and no matter what I did or what I ate, I couldn’t gain any more weight. Nor could I increase my lifts.

I bench pressed 320 pounds when I was 19. At age 27, I was benching 355 pounds. That’s an average gain of 5 pounds per year. Does that sound like a hardgainer – or an easy gainer?

Later, I learned how to train much more effectively than ever before. When I did, my weight shot up to 200 pounds – and then on up to 210 pounds – and then to 225 pounds. And I increased my strength enormously. I went on to win many powerlifting and bench press contests – all of them drug-free – and that included five United States National Championships in the bench press (in the sub-master’s age group, 198 and 220 pound weight classes).

So if you looked at me when I was gaining an average of five pounds per year on the bench press, you would have called me a hardgainer.

Later, after I learned to train the right way, you would have called me an easy gainer.

Which was I?

I was both. It was the training that made the difference.

The labels mean nothing. And in many cases, they become a distraction. As I said before, the important thing is to train – and to do it the right way. When you learn how to train correctly, good things happen.